This hunt is quite tricky. It’s best suited to older children who have done treasure hunts with written clues before. They should be competent readers and capable of figuring out hints from a text. If this seems too hard for your treasure hunters, try an easier hunt first. If it’s too easy, feel free to tell me via the contact form and I’ll start thinking about a harder hunt!  Don’t forget that part of the complexity of a hunt is in how well hidden the clues are (see the bottom of this page for ideas on where to hide the clues and how to adjust the difficulty).

Stuff Needed:

• A copy of the clues – click here to download in PDF format – (print out and cut into separate sheets or write them out if you don’t have access to a printer).
• Treasure (anything works as treasure. The joy of treasure hunting is in the hunt, more than the actual treasure. A special snack or small present work well but if you don’t have anything, make an activity of drawing or making treasure before the hunt)!

Tips on Hiding the Clues

One way to ensure your treasure hunt provides the right level of challenge for your treasure hunters is to consider carefully how easy or hard each clue will be to find, once the clue is solved. A couple of points to consider are:

• How high can the shortest person reach? Could they use a chair or step to reach something in a higher place?
• If there are a lot of something in the house (e.g. pillows), your house may end up ransacked in the hunt for treasure. Consider making these clues quite easy to find (under a pillow, not inside the case, for example). You could also add a hint onto a clue that has a lot of possible hiding places, to narrow the search.
• Conversely, if you think the clues are quite easy for your searchers, hide the items really well (completely out of sight) so the searchers have to hunt hard to find them. Blu-tack© or tape can really help with this (e.g. to stick a clue to the underside of a table).
• Be careful to avoid making the daft mistake of hiding the clues in the place that that clue describes! See below for instructions specific to this hunt.

Where to Hide the Clues

1. Keep this clue to give to the treasure hunters.
2. Hide this clue on a mirror.
3. Hide this clue under a cushion. The clue states that it could be hidden inside the cover. I would only recommend doing this if you don’t have many cushions in your house! The clue could also lead to a pillow so choose where you’d rather put it and decide whether you want to leave the hunters to find it for themselves, or re-direct them if the search is too hard.
4. Hide this clue on a picture, ideally one that is hanging on the wall. Be mindful of how high your treasure hunters can reach and also be aware that this clue is the most likely one to be seen before you are ready for it. Consider sticking the clue to the glass of a picture (facing into the picture) in a corner, or just poking out from the bottom of a frame.
5. Hide this clue under (or attached to) a set of keys.
6. Hide this clue in the cutlery drawer.
7. Hide this clue under a remote control (if other members of the family might use the remote in the meantime, stick the clue to the remote and warn them not to say anything!).
8. Hide this clue on or under a shampoo bottle. If your household has a lot of products in bottles that go in your hair, this could add complexity to this clue!
9. Hide this clue with a pair of socks, wherever socks are normally found in your house. To make it harder to find, tuck the clue into a sock with a small amount visible, and bury the sock under a pile of other socks.
10. Hide the treasure in a saucepan in the kitchen (you can use a lid to conceal it so it’s not found too early and put the saucepan wherever you like (in its normal place, or in the sink or on a worktop if the saucepans are normally out of reach).

Good luck! If you have any feedback on this, or other treasure hunts you’ve tried on the site, I’d love to hear it. It’s always a challenge writing clues to suit many locations and abilities of searcher. I welcome feedback and am always happy to answer questions.